


In a Name

by wearwind



Series: Verdant Wind [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alliance Leader's Ambitions - taken seriously, Angst, Angst and Porn, Byleth Has Bad Dreams, Canon-Typical Violence, Claude is Exhausted, Claude's real name, Divine Pulse Angst (Fire Emblem), Divine Pulse Deaths (Fire Emblem), Established Relationship, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Post-Blood of Eagle and Lion, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24360175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearwind/pseuds/wearwind
Summary: “I yield,” she manages, voice hoarse. It sends a chill down his curled back.“That’s a first,” he says, easing off the lock of his elbows to prop himself up over her. An uneasy feeling washes over him. “You– yield to me?”After their second, bloodier Battle of Gronder, neither Byleth nor Claude can sleep.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Verdant Wind [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734619
Comments: 30
Kudos: 109





	In a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iris_the_Messenger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iris_the_Messenger/gifts).



> ... I blame Iris.
> 
> Continuity-wise, this is about midway through Golden Deer war phase. As established earlier, in this verse Claude actually knows about Byleth's time-turning abilities. Beware, down there be existential angst.

> the sense of things  
>  remains in the intensity of their names  
>  ― Alejandra Pizarnik

His nights are a terrible thing.

Between the two of them, the Sovereign Duke thinks wryly as he clenches his whitened knuckles on Byleth’s tight-wound shoulders, shaking her out of whatever deathly hellscape she had locked herself into this time, there is less reason and less slumber than in his old student bedchambers. His own sleep had eluded him from the beginning, but he had slowed his breathing and lain still at her side to offer her a chance to rest; and exhausted as she was, she had accepted his gift and pretended to be deceived. He found comfort in her receding consciousness.

Now she wakes with a start, wild eyes scanning the room. Before he can realise it, he falls on his stomach with a pained grunt. His arms are twisted behinds his head, a knee pushed rough and deadly to the nape of his neck. One inch further, and –

“Byleth,” he calls. “Byleth.” She stills, but doesn’t withdraw the knee that threatens to turn the Master Tactician into a blubbering vegetable. “ _Teach._ ”

He feels the shiver that reverberates through her in his painfully wrenched arms. They’re not pulled out of their sockets just yet, but it’s a near thing. He stifles a groan into the pillow. “Hey… you know I enjoy that rough side of you, but at least give a guy a little warning first, hmm?”

He doubts she can hear him, but the low timbre of his voice still reaches _something,_ and the grip on his arms relaxes. He lies still and pliant for a moment, calculating; her breath coming in shallow, anxious gulps above him, desperate panting of a creature drowning in blood.

Two architects of death, driven mad by their own machine.

Then he wrenches himself out of her grasp, narrowly avoiding the reflexive push of the knee. It slams into the pillow like a smash of a mace. He’s got half a second – maybe less – before the softened confusion gives into killer instinct again, but he uses it up as best he can. He slams his entire body into hers like a battering ram, locking their elbows and ankles in a tight grip, and braces himself for the struggle. His muscles cry out in exhaustion, freshly knitted flesh pulling at his shoulder.

She buckles under him once – twice – thrice –

Then she goes still and limp, her skin cold and damp with sweat against the burning furnace of his chest.

“I yield,” she manages, voice hoarse. It sends a chill down his curled back.

“That’s a first,” he says, easing off the lock of his elbows to prop himself up over her. An uneasy feeling washes over him. “ _You_ – yield to me?”

She blinks her nightmare-heavy eyelids to give him a blank look. The seafoam-green locks that mark her with the seal of the goddess are darkened by sweat, plastered across her forehead in greasy streaks. Her eyes are two shadowy windows overgrown with cobweb; and whatever landscape he can see through them is littered with corpses.

It’s the same sight he sees when he closes his eyes.

“Byleth,” he says, pulling the corners of his lips up with a gut-wrenching smile, grasping for words he longs to hear from her mouth. His own grip is slipping, and for a moment he fears that it has finally happened, he has finally fallen off this insurmountable wall he had been climbing with bloodied knuckles from the day he’d had the hubris to claim a pipe dream possible -- “Byleth. We did not start this war. But we will end it.”

Nothing stirs in her eyes at that. He knows that, whatever nightmares plague the Empress of Adrestia on the nights after their battles, she consoles herself with the same thought.

He stares at her, exhaustion and hopelessness clouding his vision like double focus, until he can barely see her through the haze. Then he rolls away to his side, falling heavy into the sinking depths of the archbishop's mattresses, no more comfort left in him to offer.

His shoulder aches with a phantom pain, heedless of the magic poured into it. The feral prince of Faerghus had struck him with a bone-edged lance, tossed with such strength that it was a miracle it did not sever the arm straight through; and, biding the orders of his commander, the Sovereign Duke did not hesitate.

 _If you don’t kill him immediately,_ Byleth had said before they rode out, eyes haunted with what he’d come to read as his own death – repetitively – _the battle is lost. You must not hesitate to strike him._

He did not hesitate.

The Riegan arrow struck true between the Blaiddyd brow, and the heir of Fraldarius let out a bellowing cry that was more animal than the prince himself.

The Sword of the Creator whirred, extending spine-like to cut him down. Efficient, quick, timed to perfection, pre-empting the attack that was sure to follow, and by that moment the vision of the Sovereign Duke had begun to blur, but miraculously, _strategically,_ there appeared the pegasus of the kind daughter of Margrave Edmund –

He stares at the columns of their bed, wondering aimlessly what would become with the world should its wooden overhead chose to fall and crush them both; would the people of Fódlan cry out in joy at the war brought to a close? Would they welcome the new order brought by the bold Empress, or would they simply breathe a sigh of relief for not being pulled into a fight of clashing ideals one way or another, the tired and unjust status quo better than the chaos the new world order was unleashing –

No, he thinks, and does not mistake the stubbornness in his chest for anything else than arrogance. The power bestowed upon him by a quirk of fate, or a distant all-knowing divinity – he will not let go of it just yet. This is a bottomless pit, he knows it well; he knows the extent of it, painted time and time again by the restless whirring of his mind, with no end in sight. Not even in Fódlan, not even after the war.

But just because a pit is bottomless doesn’t mean he would ever stop trying to dig himself out of it.

 _I yield_ , she says –

He feels the press of her sweat-slick skin against his back, the soft rise of her breasts. It is the only soft part of her he knows, that and the parting of her thighs where she is more woman than commander; everything else is a chiselled stone, rigid and unyielding even as it chips away. Her calloused hand slips along his stomach to rest just above his navel, warm breath finding its way to neck.

He waits for her to speak, but she doesn’t. Instead, breathing slow and steady into his ear, she reaches out for his groin and begins stroking lightly.

He shudders despite himself, biting back a moan. He’s already half-erect, the unwanted reaction to their struggle, and the exhaustion makes his head swim at the touch. A part of him reasons dispassionately that this is why there isn’t much point at shutting off that part of himself during difficult campaigns, that he should factor their downtime and private evenings into his schedule to avoid leaving himself quite so vulnerable and needy – but for the man in him, thinking about the bedroom is the last thing on his mind when she turns time to calculate who meets death in his stead.

Her fingers are cold and slick on him, and the need builds in his belly like a coiling whip of fire, sharp and vicious. Like the spine-like Sword of the Creator –

Bile rises in his throat. He presses her hand down to his belly, stopping its motion - can’t quite make himself push her away.

The breath at his ear shivers. Then, after a moment, she asks low and flat, “Why not?”

Lost in the double haze of exhaustion and arousal, he struggles to string words. Then he laughs. “ _Why not,_ eh? Impatient lover, aren’t you? Let me sleep, Byleth.”

“I’m trying to,” she says quietly, and the chuckle turns to gravel in his throat. He turns to face her, and she withdraws her hand only to rest it again on his hip, fingers digging anxiously into his scarred skin. Her eyes are empty, glistening oily in the darkness of the episcopal bedroom.

“I appreciate it,” he says in a low voice, “but there is no need.”

“This is no pity of mine,” she tells him, her fingernails digging into his hip, and he aches for her like a touch-starved man. “Don’t push me away. Or, if you do, tell me the reason at least.”

“I – _ah_ –”

She brings her hand down, palming the inner sides of his things, and he cannot stop a groan that escapes hiss-like through clenched teeth. He’s twitching helplessly over her palm, and it seems like it requires more sanity than he’s got to string words together.

“ _Byleth,_ ” he manages. There’s something in his voice that makes her stop.

“Yes?” she asks him, moving closer. Her lips hover over his forehead, imparting some kind of divine blessing he has received over and over to no use at all, and his eyes flutter closed. The mountain of corpses rises ahead of him, and on the top, a familiar one-eyed shape cloaked in blood-soaked furs.

“Tell me,” he begs in a hoary whisper, “that there is more meaning to this fight than what we give it.”

Her cold mouth stills against his face. Then, with a breath that leaves little air in her dead chest once it departs, he can hear her say, “No.”

He shivers.

It will be his arrogance, then, that will remake the world. His insistence that the new way of his is right, and will be right for all, while the new way of the Empress is a murderous bloodbath. His climb, one bone upon the other thrust like an ice-axe up the insurmountable wall, out of the bottomless pit. For the sake of that one dream he holds dear, for the dissemination of that dream, for the _hope_ – that once he had fixed it like a guiding star on the horizon of his war struggle, somehow the end would justify the means. One man’s ambition – one man’s hubris –

Anger pushes itself up through his throat, tight like clotting blood. He clenches his hands on her shoulders, hard enough to bruise the bones. “Why do you keep coming back to save me, then? When it means killing them?” _How many lives has this love of ours claimed?_

Her hand leaves his thigh to rest on his. She doesn’t flinch at the pain, even as he cruelly tightens his grip, both fearing and longing to feel the stone of hers crack at the foundations. “Because,” she says, blinking slowly, something terrible rearing its head within the seafoam of her eyes, “we lose without you.”

“Then maybe we’re fated to lose,” he snaps, and her stone cracks in his hands.

She takes a sharp, broken breath. The mountain of corpses in her eyes rises and rises until it’s all he sees: the feral prince, the heir of Fraldarius, the knight of Galatea, the sweet-voiced mage of Dominic – the dissenters of the Western Church – the shadows of Agartha –

“I have no faith beyond you,” she says. It’s barely more than a whisper. “If you fall, I fall.”

The selfishness of it knocks the breath out of his lungs. He retakes it, shivering unsteadily. “And why _me,_ Byleth? Why did you not choose to stand with Faerghus, all these years ago? Or Adrestia? Why did you choose to pile those corpses for _my_ sake, and not – not to save _them?”_

She straightens up very slowly, sitting up. His hands fall away from her without his conscious thought; he is watching the sea rise, an unstoppable tide. “I have saved Dimitri,” she says, and the word echoes in his overstrained mind: _Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri._ A kind man, before he was king. “I have saved Felix.” The sword-master, so fiercely proud. “I have saved Ingrid—“ _Ingrid –_ “and Annette and Mercedes. And the world hasn’t _changed._ I pleaded with them time and time again, and have gone back so many times I knew the exact inflection of their anger and hopelessness when they spoke back. I tried. I tried until there was no more time to rewind.” She rises over him like seawater, and he is a drowning man. “I can’t change their choice, Claude, but I know my own. I am what the goddess chose to become. I fell in love with a dream of a man, and I will see that dream through, as long as it is there. The dream of a change and a better world that he dreams for me.”

The dream of a man, he thinks, reaching out with shivering knuckles against all better judgement. A _man_ –

Just men and women tied in a bloodied iron net of their own desires and allegiances. And it is so profoundly unjust, so profoundly _laughable,_ that his old professor’s fancy shall bring along an upset of the world’s foundation, that he just _happened_ to carry the blood of Tiana von Riegan to the one place in the world where it would matter, that his Fódlani eyes stood out just enough in his dark features to curry him favour with the woman of the goddess’ power. Such stain on that title he still doesn’t stand to pronounce without at least a shadow of mockery, the _Master Tactician_ – the one key advantage he had gained was via pure chance only.

He cradles her to his heart, feeling for the hollow thud of her pulse under his fingertips, and cannot hate her for it.

“Claude,” she whispers against his lips. “Claude.”

He shivers under her, and doesn’t protest as she guides him inside her with a steady hand. She sighs as he fills her, and this time he doesn’t stop a groan that is part pain, part pleasure, part relief. His body feels heavy, sensitive in an inert, sluggish way, and the only thing he can do is bury his head in the crook of her shoulder and cover it with sloppy open-mouthed kisses. Her slick skin stifles his helpless noise as she begins to move against him, softly, gently, still almost too much with the fresh and needy oversensitivity that wells inside him like choking smoke.

He reaches between their bodies, begins to rub at her over the soft, obscene slapping sounds that their joined flesh makes; her eyes drift shut, mouth parting in a small, almost-pained grimace. “I yield,” she whispers, rocking against him. “I yield to you.”

“And I,” he grinds between his teeth like a hiss, pushing his hips up to meet her, “do not accept.”

She opens her eyes to look at him again, and the faces of the dead stare through them, as if through a thin layer of dirt over a mass grave. “You don’t,” she says flatly.

He shakes his head, picking up the pace. His fingers on her are slick with her own cold sweat, and she shudders over him, toes curling up against his calves. “Byleth,” he says through the tremor in his voice. “If I die, and you can’t turn it back— like Jeralt—”

She pushes into him violently, fingers curling around his forearms in a painful spasm. “Don’t—”

“If I die,” he repeats, hasty, impatient. He can feel his need building in his belly like a rising tide. Unstoppable. His head is swimming, his words punctuated by broken gasps. “It’s arrogance, I know – but you must carry it forth. Fódlan – Almyra – they’re yours to remake, love, yours to lead – I will—”

“You will _live,_ ” she says with a brutal squeeze to his once-wounded shoulder, and he yelps as his traitorous brain fires off a mirror of his injury. She freezes over him, eyes growing wide and guilty, but he pushes through the pain to crane his head towards her and kiss her. She yields her mouth to him entirely, her breath hot and heavy against his.

“They’re yours,” he whispers when they break apart for air. “Just as I am. And I know you can lead them to greatness. I’ve seen enough of your guidance, _Teach._ ”

The sound that falls from their lips is a broken thing. “I can be a duke – or a king,” she says, “but without you –”

“No,” he tells her. “If this is your choice – if _I am_ – then you will carry that cursed weight with me. Both the war and its purpose. You’re not just a goddess, Byleth. Not just an observer to our mortal struggle. You’re mortal too, dammit, and if I must uphold those ideas of a just, shared world, with no more walls or separation or ignorant hate, and bathe them all in blood before they come to fruition – then you will too, do you hear me? Even across my grave.”

She is very still, and for a moment he wonders whether he had pushed too hard. Whether the sky would reopen and claim her back into nothingness, and he would be left like he’d been twice already, staring up into the unforgiving vacuum of divinity and deprived even of a coffin to scratch his bloodied nails at –

“Yes,” she breathes into his ear, and he shivers with a soft groan – a man on the brink. “But you – you are also more than the masks you carry to bear it. Not just the duke. Not just the tactician. A man with an ideal, and the will behind it. I’ll carry it with you, Claude. ”

She begins to roll her hips again, faster, needier, and he tightens his left arm around her, cradling her as tight as possible without letting go of her heat under his fingers. She whimpers, eyes fluttering shut, and he can almost _taste it –_

“Khalid,” he bites out, and she opens her hazed eyes to look at him, her lip trembling in anticipation. But beyond the landscape of the dead, there’s something else in them, something half-surprised, half-hopeful- “My name – is Khalid.”

“ _Khalid_ ,” she breathes, and he comes with a lightning behind his eyes.

She rocks over the edge a half-second later, clutching at him desperately in a rib-shattering squeeze. He doesn’t move, listening to his own loud, ragged breath, the frantic thudding beneath his chest, the quiet rustling of the sheets as their own bodies quake in aftershocks. His own pulse is hammering in his ears, the sound of his birth name echoing over and over with the weight of an anchor.

In the future they’re carving out of their friends’ bodies, maybe, someday, he could wear it proud. Both names – Fódlani, Almyran, his.

A spark of longing builds into a fire in his chest - a hope of once claiming a home where he could belong, the wall built to separate the two halves of himself finally, _finally_ coming undone. At their hands, at their weapons, at their arrogance and hubris and the necessity of choice – undone.

Closing his eyes, he looks past the dead and within himself; and sees the exact extent of his folly. Across the continent, no doubt Edelgard should hold the same true belief as her own fire to light the way. And it was the same deep-set truth that had set Dimitri on his murderous run. And yet – and yet –

He is an arrogant, hypocritical man. But standing in the knowledge of it, Claude von Riegan, son of Tiana – _Khalid Qoli Khan, son of Suleiman –_ looks into his ideal and proclaims it a fair and just way of the world.

“I love you,” he whispers into her hair, another shiver shaking them both in a soft echo. She murmurs something indistinguishable, face buried into his chest, but then raises herself up on her elbows to study his face. As she blinks at him, the seafoam of her eyes gives way to something relieved; and he repeats his admission once again in Almyran.

She tries to mimic him, her stiff Fódlani lips awkward around the sound, and the laugh that escapes him is genuine.

“There is no meaning to anything, not ever,” she says very softly, sliding away from him to tuck herself under his arm, the line of back pressed tight against his chest like a shield. “Not beyond what you choose to give it. And if we choose to remake the world, then let us dream a new meaning for all of them, Claude.” 

“Yes,” he says, lethargic and drowsy; the weight of his own death sags at his shoulders. Dimitri – Felix – Ingrid – Annette – Mercedes – Edelgard –

And the unborn children across borders, laughing freely on the grassy fields of their old battlegrounds, the corpses of all manners of fiery ideals sleeping underneath. Some of the children of their own blood; some of the corpses theirs. _Should ours win in the end, I know the kind of world I want._

Claude sleeps, and dreams of crumbling walls.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoever picks up on what I'm actually doing with names here gets a cookie. Also, welcome to the least smutty smut you'll have ever read, because clearly I am incapable of keeping the plot/angst away from the fun bits-bumping.
> 
> Thanks for reading, pal, I'll see you in the comments! Let me know what you think. (I have a Claudeleth Writer Discord too if you wanna hang out, ask me about it--)
> 
> [Yell at me on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/wearwind_ao3)


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